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Happy Poetry Month Friends of the Slowdown are invited to celebrate with a special offer from Poetry Magazine this April. An annual subscription to Poetry includes a limited edition notebook. The notebook features a devious quote from Dorothy Elaski on its cover. I'm almost always lying in a poem and the full poem is inside. Use the notebook for your own poems, lies and secrets. Subscribe today@poetrymagazine.org lying each episode of the Slowdown offers you a moment of attention, a poem and reflection that shift your perspective during busy days. In celebration of National Poetry Month, you can now receive an added benefit when you support the Slowdown, a sponsorship free version of the podcast. Keep your listening centered on poetry because the best moments of your day are uninterrupted. Learn more when you make your gift@downdownshow.org and thank you. I'm Maggie Smith and this is the Slowdown. Some houses just feel homey, easy and warm and welcoming. They're the houses that kids and neighbors gravitate to. The houses you can feel instantly comfortable in. You aren't tiptoeing around or worrying about making a mess. My parents house, the house I was raised in, was and still is one of these houses. There's nothing museum like or fussy about it. We didn't have the biggest house in town and we didn't have a pool or any other big draw. In fact, my parents were late adopters of cable TV and microwaves and other things that kids might think of as standard amenities. But there was always laughter and music and always people my parents and their friends, our extended family and our neighbors, my siblings and their friends. It was one of those houses where everyone felt welcome. Now that I have a family and a house of my own, I want our house to be that warm and welcoming too. I'm not a frequent entertainer. I don't host very many dinner parties or cocktail hours. Maybe that's because I work from home. So in the evenings I'm ready to leave and go someplace else. But my kids are always welcome to host sleepovers and to have friends over for dinner or a movie or depending on the season, a snowball or a water balloon fight. I love it. I want to be that house. I want our house to be a place where anyone can be themselves and know they are with people who care about them. People they can trust. I want my friends and my kids friends to feel safe and comfortable with, to relax and have fun and to leave feeling ready to face the world outside, which isn't always as warm and welcoming as I'd like it to be. Today's poem is about how the small things we offer one another meals, conversation, a soft place to land are not small at all. They're everything. Community by Emily Bright it is nearly midnight and I'm scrubbing at the grout. The dishes washed are put away. This is how I love the people in my house with baking soda and a sponge we build our community from the kitchen out knowing eggs or cornbread stretch a meal to feed the neighbor boys who come when we sit down to supper. They always join when we invite them, always ask to use the phone to talk to girls they claw through adolescence and such obstacles I never had to face gangs and constant relocations. Michael's father halfway through his 15 years for selling I learn. I learn from them. Outside sirens flash their blue and red again. I sweep footprints in a pile, fill the bucket for the mop. So much is beyond my circle of control. But this house, this place of gathering, it shines, if only for a few to see, if only through the morning. The Slowdown is a production of American Public Media in partnership with the Poetry Foundation. To get a poem delivered to you daily, go to slowdownshow.org and sign up for our newsletter and find us on Instagram loadownshow and bluesky.downdownshow.org. Hi, it's Maggie. The Slowdown helps you discover new poems and revisit old favorites. You can help us continue showcasing poetry from a diverse swath of authors by making a tax deductible gift. Head to slowdownshow.org donate today.